Vark is one of the startups trying to help artists perform concerts in the metaverse, and now it has a new funding round. The post Japanese VR-music startup Vark raises ¥1bn funding round appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

US startup Boombox is one of the companies trying to help musicians and producers store their files in the cloud. The post Boombox raises $7m for music-workflow tools (and its AI ‘Boombot’) appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We haven’t written about HiNOTE before, but it sounds interesting: a messaging app that enables artists to send personalised videos to fans. The post Personalised-video firm HiNOTE bags a pair of hip-hop legends appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Swedish startup Freshsound launched its sync licensing platform in 2021, with the aim of helping clients in advertising, films, TV and games to speed up the process of clearing commercial tracks. Having raised a €1.3m pre-seed funding round in 2022, now it has closed another round: €2m. The post Freshsound raises €2m for its self-serve […]

New York-based startup POSH is having its official launch this week, but it’s already been building up a head of steam. The post Event management and ticketing startup POSH raises $5m funding appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Dr Arun Castro, medical director at Roadie Medic, is the inaugural winner of the Music Ally NEXT Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Held this week at our NEXT conference in London, the award was backed by Universal Music Group, and was our celebration of the next wave of music-tech founders. Roadie Medic is a […]

Startup Beatly Music says it’s going “back to Napster days” with a safe haven for music with AI-generated vocals based on real artists. The post Beatly Music wants to build a takedown-proof home for AI music appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Turntable Live has acquired JQBX. No, NOT fractionalised royalties startup JKBX with a K. This is social music app JQBX with a Q. The post Turntable Live acquires fellow social-music startup JQBX appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Two new startups in the audio-collaboration space have popped up in recent days: Samply and Myxt. Both are aimed at musicians. The post Samply and Myxt are the latest music collaboration startups appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Adaptive-music startup Reactional Music has raised a pre-Series A funding round of $2.05m, led by Amanotes and Butterfly Ventures. The post Startup Reactional Music raises just over $2m of new funding appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Streaming startup Gimme Radio is shutting down. Is this an example of chilly funding headwinds blowing for other music-tech startups? The post Gimme Radio shuts down as startup funding squeeze starts to bite appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Enote is the latest startup focusing on digital sheet-music, and it has raised a €10m funding round to continue building its technology. The post Digital sheet-music startup Enote raises €10m funding round appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Moises has come a long way since we first wrote about it in November 2019: the AI-powered stem-separation app now has 30m registered users. The post AI music-making app Moises hits 30m registered users milestone appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Need to book a DJ? There’s a new app for that: Djaayz. It soft-launched in France in late 2022, and this week has expanded to the UK. The post DJ-booking app Djaayz expands to UK after French soft-launch appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Automata Radio is a Twitch channel streaming electronic music round the clock, with ChatGPT playing a hosting role, responding to listeners. The post Twitch channel Automata Radio blends music with ChatGPT AI appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

People making videos for YouTube and social networks need background music that won’t get their content taken down. The post ThatTrack is the latest music library for online-video creators appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Techno artist Cari Lekebusch has teamed up with a startup called Chroma to release an app called EZPZ (yes, ‘easy peasy’). The post Artist Cari Lekebusch teams up with Chroma for EZPZ music app appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Some news stories move fast, and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is one of them. It was used by a wide range of technology firms. The post Startups could face payroll crunch as Silicon Valley Bank collapses appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Spin closed its print magazine in 2012 to go online-only, but in recent years has been stepping up its wider business as a media brand. The post Spin reveals first three startups for its music-tech incubator Spin Labs appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Larry Jackson was a key figure at Apple Music as its global creative director until he left in September 2022. The post Apple backs former exec Larry Jackson’s new firm Gamma appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Surf Music has been operating for three years: running in “quasi-stealth” mode in Japan and South Korea. Now it’s ready to go global. The post Songs marketplace Surf Music expands beyond Japan and South Korea appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s been a busy messaging morning for Music Ally. “Who even are you lol?” asked Billie Eilish, before asking us for recommendations. The post AI startup whose chatbot mimics Billie Eilish and Kanye West valued at $1bn appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Snoop Dogg is backing the launch of a new app called Shiller, which blends livestreaming and NFTs for creators. The post Snoop Dogg-backed startup Shiller combines NFTs and livestreams appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Song Sleuth has built a tool to hunt down “undiscovered” royalties from user-generated content and derivative works. The post Warner Chappell taps startup Song Sleuth to boost UGC revenues appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In 2020 we wrote about a startup called Release Party that was hosting livestreams for musicians and helping them to sell tickets. The post Release Party rebrands as Offstage with AI-driven analytics appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Artists and their teams are facing up to the challenge of simultaneously serving TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat. The post Yo Suzy is one of the first creative agencies for short video appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Do the music streaming and gambling industries make for easy bedfellows? We’re about to find out with a new launch in the US. The post The latest music-streaming app is from… the Arizona Lottery? appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

FanDuel is one of the biggest names in the sports-betting world. Now its founders are getting into music NFTs with their new startup Vault. The post Music NFTs roundup: Vault, Revelator, Guzzu… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

This report aims to provide cut-through on the big issues that we think will dominate 2023. In it, we’ve isolated the innovative ideas from some of the most influential thinkers across the music industry – and then drawn out the key learnings for you to take forward as the year unfolds.  In this report, four key perspectives on the coming […]

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s interest in health-tech is already known, but now we have more details on a specific venture he’s involved with. The post Spotify CEO reveals more on healthcare startup Neko Health appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Startup Encore Music Tech Solutions has launched to help more music companies modernise their royalties and payments systems. The post Encore Music Tech Solutions launches with Empire Publishing deal appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Hell’s Kettlebells! Run to the Treadmills! And Fitness for All! Etc etc. Don’t think we’re poking fun: metal tracks are great for workouts. The post Metal Workout offers a rockier spin on digital fitness services appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

One of Tidal’s developers, Ziad Al Halabi, has created a mobile app called Rewind that explores music history. The post Rewind app offers historical music discovery (ChatGPT reviews included) appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

To say that being a startup founder is “a learning experience” is a kind way of saying that it is fraught with endless challenges The post Music startup lessons: ‘Some rightsholders don’t even know what they own!’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The final session of the NY:LON Connect conference showcased the winners of Music Ally’s SI:X initiative, with pitches. The post DAACI crowned audience favourite in NY:LON Connect startups session appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In advance of NY:LON CONNECT 2023, we asked Matt Urmy, co-founder & CEO of collaboration platform Artist Growth – which is co-sponsor of the event’s Innovation and Startups track – to share with us the exciting opportunities he sees ahead in 2023. Urmy lays out eight clear messages designed to help readers navigate an industry which has been subject to a “pretty hostile takeover”, but […]

We’ve been writing regularly about the emergence of ‘text-to-image’ AIs. Now there’s another branch to think about: text-to-playlist AIs. The post After text-to-image AIs now there’s a text-to-playlist AI appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

AR Rahman is one of the most revered Indian musicians, but now he has ambitions in the music-tech world too. The post AR Rahman talks up plans for Katraar digital music platform appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The app enables artists and retailers to sell products to fans who can pay using bank cards or mobile payments platforms. The post Kenyan musician Bien-Aime Alusa wants to expand HustleSasa app appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In November we reported on former WMG exec Scott Cohen’s plans to launch a fractionalised music royalties startup. The post Scott Cohen reveals JKBX’s executive team ahead of 2023 launch appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

How long can the boom in music catalogue acquisitions continue? Judging by the number of startups in the area, there’s still life in this trend. The post Former Tidal COO raises $7m for catalogue-buying firm Duetti appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

B2B music firm Tuned Global is seeing a big opportunity in the medical technology (medtech) industry, buoyed by a recent report predicting that musical therapy could be a $4.4bn market by 2028. The post Tuned Global adds two more clients in the medtech industry appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

OffBeat is the startup formerly known as MonkingMe, which rebranded in March and pivoted towards NFTs. The post Music NFTs roundup: OffBeat, Clef, Public Pressure… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s time to announce the winners of Music Ally SI:X, our new global showcase, contest and mentorship program for music/tech startups. The post DAACI, Hawkr, Volta XR, Biiah, Curve and Music Health win Music Ally SI:X appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The new AI-music startup, like its established rivals, is pitching itself as a boon for human songwriters rather than a replacement for them. The post Staccato pitches itself to songwriters as ‘an AI Lennon to your McCartney’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

UK-based startup MediMusic, which explores the intersection of music and medicine, has just joined the Abbey Road Red music-tech incubator. The post Medical music startup MediMusic joins Abbey Road Red incubator appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

When it comes to the climate emergency, some artists are putting their money where fans’ mouths are. The post Diplo, Ellie Goulding and Kygo invest in biodegradable bottles appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

“Your algorithm’s like a breath of spring, your code is soft like summer rain…” These are NOT the lyrics in a new cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’, we hasten to add: it’s very faithful to the original. The post AI music roundup: Holly+ does Dolly, Emergent Drums… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It must be the week for music industry veterans who recently left Warner Music to the wrappers off their new startups. The post Former Warner Chappell exec Eric Mackay reveals new venture Imbr appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In September, Warner Music Group announced that Scott Cohen, its chief innovation officer, recorded music, would be leaving the company at the end of September. The post Ex-WMG exec Scott Cohen to launch fractionalised music royalties startup appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

While NFTs stole the headlines in 2022, a raft of other exciting developments took place, and various music/tech startups took leaps and bounds as they strove to create new technological opportunities for creativity, commerce, or collaboration in the music space. In this report, we take stock and figure out what it means – and what happens […]

Earlier this year, we launched Music Ally SI:X, our new, global music startups contest. Today, we’re announcing the 36 finalists. The post Music Ally SI:X 2022 :: meet the 36 finalists in our startups contest appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s a mark of the pace at which things are moving that the first time Music Ally is writing about Tetavi, it’s already rebranding. The post Volumetric capture startup Tetavi raises $15m and rebrands appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Gixon is a startup from Finland that launched in 2021 and aims to make it easier to book artists for live performances. The post Finnish startup Gixon launches live music bookings app in UK appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We’ve been following with interest some of the grassroots efforts to create decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) around music. The post StemsDAO raises $4m seed funding for its music-focused DAO appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Vinyl sales are booming, but it’s also good to see an uptick in the discussion and innovation around making the format more sustainable. The post Naked Record Club launches with sustainable vinyl focus appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s a relatively recent trend for artists and music companies to actively encourage fans creating their own merchandise – and build commercial models around it. The post Softside wants to help more artists sell fan-designed merch appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The Music Tectonics conference is fast making a name for itself as one of the key music/tech events in the US, and that includes its ‘Swimming with Narwhals’ startups contest. The post Music Tectonics reveals finalists in its 2022 startups contest appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Symphony is the latest startup hoping to build a viable streaming business around classical music. The post Symphony launches video streaming service for classical music appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Music Ally has been covering music in the metaverse – the intersection of music with games and virtual worlds – for a long time now. The post Music in the Metaverse Challenge showcases four new startups appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The nature of some fandoms is to generate a fan hierarchy, often based around either perceived proximity to the artist, or by regularity of posting, or encouraging fan behaviour like downloading of new songs The post Fan-centric platform Fave launches “fan verification” appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Web3 music marketplace Serenade has partnered with Warner Records UK to launch “digital pressings”: The post Serenade launches chart-eligible “digital pressings” appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

When AI music platforms were at the spiky end of the Hype Cycle, they seemed poised to offer a lot of exciting possibilities with a wide variety of real world applications The post Cyanite raises funding to create “universal music intelligence” appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We know SyncFloor as one of the companies trying to shake up the sync market: we profiled it in 2020 The post SyncFloor’s new offshoot is music NFT platform Groovemint appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The Wallifornia Music & Innovation Summit took place earlier this month in Belgium, and it included a pitch contest for startups. The post AudioShake wins Wallifornia Music Tech Pitch Contest appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s a fun spin on the idea of digital collectibles: an online game that involves building decks of digital cards based on French rappers. The post Yadeck turns French rappers into NFT-driven digital card game appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Xone has become the 17th startup to join Abbey Road Red, the startup incubator run within Abbey Road Studios in London. The post Metaverse firm Xone joins Abbey Road Red startup incubator appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

With its plethora of short-video apps, and a huge audience on YouTube and other social media platforms, India is home to hundreds of thousands of content creators. The post SyncMama targets creators with ‘royalty-included’ music licensing service appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Music/tech accelerator Techstars Music has announced the 10 startups who’ll be taking part in its 2022 cohort. The post Techstars Music names 10 startups for its 2022 cohort appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We know Coinbase mainly for its cryptocurrency exchange, but last week the company expanded into NFTs with the launch of its own marketplace. The post Music NFTs roundup: Coinbase, Beatdapp, Afterparty… appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The company has launched its first Aux Awards, with 11 categories covering musicians, podcasters and music companies. The post Aux Awards wants to celebrate innovative artists and startups appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Ristband is the startup formerly known as Overview Ark. It rebranded last year while working on its plans for a ‘multiplayer music metaverse’ platform. The post Music metaverse startup Ristband bags Epic Games ‘MegaGrant’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

British startup Where You At is testing an app that it hopes will help women to feel safer when they are out clubbing. The post Where You At app focuses on safety during nights out appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

We’ve seen various attempts in recent years to improve the quality of metadata identifying the writers of songs and their splits. Session, for example, has created tools to encourage songwriters to start creating this metadata from the earliest stage of their working process. Another startup has emerged today with its own ideas. Family in Music […]

The Trends Report is designed to set your synapses buzzing with ideas, and put you on the front foot in 2022. In it, we look back at what happened in 2021 – that most complex of years – and turn what we learned into a forward-thinking series of analyses, with advice, ideas and context, to help you navigate a better route through the year ahead. […]

The Music Fund is one of a cluster of startups promising to pay artists advances based on predicted streaming royalties, while leaving them full ownership of their rights. The post More fintech/music crossover as Hifi buys The Music Fund appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Spotify likes to see itself as the on-demand audio platform that will kill off ‘linear radio’, but even its audio is still linear in the sense that you choose a track, playlist or podcast and listen to it. However, the emergence of smart speakers and voice assistants has seen some experimentation around interactive audio, such […]

The startup is tackling the challenges around financial management and payments. It’s aimed at artists, managers, tour and production managers and tour accountants. The post UK startup Voly to launch financial service focused on music appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In August, Serenade announced itself as the latest startup looking to help musicians and music brands create and sell NFTs. It promised to be both accessible – fans could pay using regular debit and credit cards – and environmentally sustainable through its use of an ‘eco-friendly’ blockchain called Polygon. Since then, Serenade has worked with artists including […]

Single Music is a startup that makes a ‘monetised video’ tool for ecommerce platform Shopify, so that artists using the latter to sell merch can also use it for ticketed livestreams. The company says that it has sold nearly a million tickets and generated more than $22m of revenue for its clients since the beginning of […]

There are several ways labels can scan video and social services for use of their recordings, including the tools of those platforms and third-party startups. What about recordings of live music performances though? That’s a trickier task, but startups are trying to tackle that too. Song Sleuth is one example. It uses AI and machine learning to […]

Tangy Market analyses music’s past performance and future potential, then pays musicians upfront, converting the predicted royalties into shares to sell. The post Tangy Market sells slice of song recorded by Christina Aguilera appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

When it comes to influencer marketing, traditionally an artist or their team agrees to pay an (often hefty) fee – and the influencer posting their piece of content gets paid regardless of the post’s performance. This can make it tricky to justify whether working with influencers is a worthwhile spend to achieve an artist’s marketing […]

German startup Musicube is the latest company touting AI-powered technology to analyse and tag catalogues of music. The company has just raised $560k of funding to continue developing its audio analysis product, which is already being used by clients including Sony Music and Budde Music Publishing. Musicube has been developing its technology for use by labels, publishers […]

Based in Canada, Singdaptive has just emerged from a year-long beta of a service that teaches people to sing with a roster of 21 vocal coaches. The post Startup Singdaptive would like to teach the world to sing appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Rcrdshp launched its first collection in August and sold out in a matter of hours, before repeating the trick with its second drop later that month. The post Rcrdshp raises ‘multi-million’ seed round to make more NFTs appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

2021 is the year audio startup Clubhouse became a $1bn unicorn, but it’s facing plenty of competition. Twitter and Facebook already have Clubhouse-like features in testing, Spotify just bought Locker Room, and startup OurSouls is launching out of stealth mode this morning with an iPhone app, and funding led by VC firm Looflirpa Fund. Silicon Valley veteran […]

British startup Jaak was part of the first wave of firms trying to put blockchain technology to use in the music industry. It was part of the first Techstars Music accelerator in 2017, and launched a pilot with partners including WMG, Warner/Chappell, BMG and Global Music Rights the following year. Founder and CEO Vaughn McKenzie-Landell was also part of the […]

Freeme – pronounced “free me” – is an independent distributor & label services company based in Lagos. Founder and CEO Michael Ugwu has international industry experience: he was previously general manager at Sony Music West Africa, and is the first Black person to be appointed to the Merlin Board. As a business, Freeme has twin […]

New rules on equity crowdfunding in the US will allow startups to raise up to $5m a year from ‘non-accredited’ investors (i.e. the general public). Expect a wave of startups testing it out, including music firms. Early out of the blocks is MySongbird, a streaming service for live performances and music documentaries, which is seeking $5m […]

Last year, startups accelerator Techstars Music announced plans to run its 2021 program virtually, while promising that 50% of the startups’ CEOs would be diverse. It also revealed that Amazon Music had joined its ‘member companies’ from the music industry, supporting the accelerator including investment in its startups. Concord is also chipping in extra seed and follow-in […]

If you’re a livestreaming startup, now is the time to be raising funding (or if you’re Veeps, getting bought by Live Nation). Two of the companies trying to help musicians perform live online for their fans have announced new funding rounds this week. Maestro, whose clients have included Billie Eilish and Erykah Badu, has raised […]

Startup Vampr is describing itself as a “LinkedIn for Creatives” nowadays, and the company has just raised more funding to continue developing its service. The money is $790k, taking it to $2.6m raised so far – with a Series A funding round to follow. Vampr says it will use the new funding to launch a […]

We profiled Pex in March last year: the startup has developed technology to scan, fingerprint and index audio and video on a swathe of video streaming services and social apps. It has since shared some of its data on Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Now the company has raised an impressive $57m funding round to continue its growth. Tencent and Tencent […]

In 2018, ticketing startup Seated made people, ahem, sit up and take notice when it was one of the winners at the Midemlab startups contest. We reported on its winning pitch at the time, with the company working directly with artists to sell tickets to their shows, and to remind fans when they were on sale – even automatically […]

With every music streaming service and their aunt piling into podcasts, we’re interested in some of the innovation coming from startups in that space: as a precursor to future features (or indeed acquisitions) from the big platforms. So Podz is worth checking out: it’s an iPhone app pitched as “your audio newsfeed”. What that means is it […]

Jadu is one of the startups exploring the potential of augmented reality technology for music artists. Its latest experiment is with artist Palaye Royale, for whom it has created an AR experience called ‘Curse of Calypso‘. It’ll bring the band (and their piano) into fans’ living rooms, along with music from their latest album ‘The […]

It’s now a full decade since the launch of Turntable·fm, the music streaming service built around avatars and chat rooms. It got lots of buzz at its peak, but ultimately foundered – in part because it struggled with licensing. Could the idea work better in 2021? We’re going to find out. One of the original team, […]

As the ‘TikTok-fuelled hit’ stories keep coming, so the idea of enlisting influencers on that and other social apps to help break a new track becomes more appealing – even if manufacturing such virality remains challenging. Breakr is one of the startups popping up promising to help. It’s a platform for ‘music influencers’ and artists, who can […]

Warner Music Group has teamed up with Feed Media Group – the company behind B2B music firm Feed.fm – to launch an initiative that aims to make it easier for startups to license music. It’s called Adaptr, and its core is a pre-licensed library of music for developers to use in their apps, for which they’ll pay […]

We wrote about Syng in May 2020: it was a startup founded by former Apple design team member Christopher Stringer, which was planning to launch its own smart speaker and subscription service. The company is still working on those first products, but as launch nears, it has made a significant hire: former Vevo and Magic Leap […]

Music tech startups! It’s that time of year again: when industry conference Midem opens the applications process for its Midemlab startups contest. It’s the competition’s 14th year, and as ever Music Ally is delighted to be one of the selecting partners (alongside Panache Ventures and The Lynk) who’ll be rummaging through the applicants to pick […]

We’ve written a lot about what the Covid-19 pandemic meant for the music industry, but what about the wider tech world – and funding for startups in particular? CrunchBase has published its annual review of the figures. It claims that global venture funding grew by 4% year-on-year to $300bn in 2020, and then breaks this […]

Bitfury Surround says it is about to provide a platform that can take all your data, attach it to the blockchain, and standardise it. Then, you can look at this vast, interconnected set of data and figure out, for instance, the money you’ve not recovered, and who you need to get it from. Or figure out who to market to […]

A lot has been written about the growth of livestreamed music performances during the Covid-19 pandemic – including some shows that were pre-recorded. Meanwhile, some artists and labels with archives of past concerts have been exploring YouTube as a way to keep fans entertained, including using its premieres feature to turn them into social events. Now […]

Last month, data-driven A&R startup Instrumental announced that Tencent Music and Tencent Holdings had acquired a minority stake in the British company. Now it’s launching a new initiative in its homeland called the ‘Instrumental Music Fund’, with £10m to invest in independent artists that have been talent-spotted using its technology. “For some time, we have known […]

In April we wrote about Sony Music investing in a startup called Tully, founded by US artist Joyner Lucas, which had an app that was part distribution service, and part suite of tools for artists to manage both music creation and their business. Now Tully is expanding its offering with something called ‘Tully Platform’, including several tiers of […]

Fangage is the startup founded by Dutch DJ and producer Sam Feldt: a fan platform for musicians and influencers to promote their music and content; communicate with fans; sell merchandise; and build audiences. Founded in 2016, it’s been used by clients in the dance world including Oliver Heldans, Laidback Luke and Armada Music, attracting hundreds of […]

Our main feature focuses on TikTok’s eventful 2020 so far, from the deepening of its relationship with artists and the music industry to its tangles with the Trump administration, along with the rise of the short video apps category more generally. Our Second Look section analyses recent stories and data around Hipgnosis Songs Fund; Tencent […]

Quincy Jones is no stranger to the world of music/tech startups: he founded music video-on-demand service Qwest TV, which launched three years ago. Now he’s also investing in another startup, Musimap, which describes itself as an “emotional artificial intelligence” company, with a lead product called MusiMe which is a “psycho-emotional profiling engine”. Essentially it analyses people’s […]

There’s a price on everything in the influencer world, and with a startup called PearPop, that includes collaborating with your favourite TikTok stars. The company has announced a marketplace for TikTokers to charge fans for collab posts, and according to TechCrunch it already has more than 25,000 fans signed up. The fees are public: a duet, stitch or […]

Scooter Braun, Troy Carter, Patreon CEO Jack Conte, actor Jared Leto and artist Kygo’s Palm Crew Investments are among the investors in the latest ticketed livestreams startup, Moment House, which announced its $1.5m seed funding round today. The round was led by Forerunner Ventures, with Sequoia Capital partner Jess Lee also among the angel investors, […]

Digital marketing agency Motive Unknown is spinning off a new company called Positive Subversion, which it describes as a “project and label management consultancy for independently-minded artists, managers and record labels”. It’s a partnership with former !K7 exec Siofra McComb, and has already signed up Run The Jewels (already a Motive Unknown client) and label Innovative […]

Six months ago, livestreaming was in many quarters seen as a temporary sticking plaster for the shutdown of physical concerts, likely to return to a niche once the latter returned. A lot of people have changed their tune since then: physical concerts aren’t returning anywhere near as soon as we had hoped, and successful livestreaming […]

The ‘will streaming kill radio’ debate rumbles on, but it certainly hasn’t happened yet: radio airplay remains important for many artists, and tracking it globally remains a challenge. We’ve written about startups like World Airplay Radio Monitor (Warm) in the past, and now there’s a new contender: Maltese startup Radio Tools. It’s analysing the music played on more […]

Oda is a startup making a pair of speakers (also called Oda) that look very nice indeed – “made of wood, glass, cotton, and steel: materials that are humble and human, not technological” as the blurb puts it – with as much attention to detail paid to their audio innards. However, what interests us about the $299 […]

Post-IPO, there’s a flurry of dealmaking and senior appointments happening at Warner Music Group, as the company gears up for its next stage of growth. Today alone it has announced new partnerships with Indian company Tips Music and investment firm SOSV. The former deal will see Warner Music India distributing the film-music label’s music in […]

Scottish startup Rockifi isn’t brand new: back in 2018 it was being hailed as ‘Tinder for rock fans’ with an app that helped rock and metal fans find likeminded fans to go to concerts with. However, it’s relaunching this month with a bigger ambition: to be a fully fledged streaming service for hard rock and heavy metal. […]

Are the big music streaming services too similar to one another? And if so, how can they break out of that box to innovate and differentiate themselves? A panel at Music Ally’s Sandbox Summit Global online conference yesterday, had some ideas. Angel Gambino, partner at venture development firm Prehype and until recently chief commercial officer […]

Artists turning up in your living room to play a concert is awkward at the best of times – what if you run out of teabags or biscuits? – but impossible under current social distancing rules in many parts of the world. Cue a startup that wants to do it virtually. A company called Trick 3D has launched an […]

We spotted Synaesthetic in October last year, as a startup promising to develop “a new musical medium, that is more engaging and practical; through classical music theory, cutting-edge AI, and neuroscience”. Nearly a year later, the company is showing off more of its plans for a product called ‘Lava’, and an artist-testing scheme called ‘Leap’ that goes […]

Twitch recently announced that it was shutting down its karaoke game Twitch Sings, including removing all the archived broadcasts and clips using it. But where one karaoke game closes, another one pops up backed by a different digital platform. That game is called SingHeads, and the platform is Snapchat, which is an official partner. Released initially for […]

A new tool to help managers and artists research Spotify playlists appears to be picking up some steam. PlaylistSupply was launched by a manager, Noah Motion, as a way for his peers to search for Spotify playlists relevant to their artist’s genre (or other search keywords), see their public data, and find contacts – email addresses included – for […]

Where there’s a startup that’s gone public in a big IPO, there’ll be fledgling rivals hoping to follow the same path and compete with it. Such is the case with fitness firm Peloton. One of its latest rivals is called Apex Rides, with its own combination of a physical exercise bike, and digital workout classes available […]

Made In Memphis Entertainment (Mime), launched in 2015, has a quietly radical idea at its core: ‘disruptive decentralisation’. It’s about creating a root-and-branch alternative to the traditional music business structure. And the company is starting local, in Memphis, Tennessee. At present, Mime’s family of companies includes Beatroot Music, the only Black-owned music distributor in the […]

Do you want to stream to YouTube, Twitch or Facebook? How about these and a couple of dozen more platforms simultaneously? That’s what the technology of a startup called Restream does, and investors are excited to the tune of a $50m Series A funding round for the company. Sapphire Ventures and Insight Partners led the […]

News of a livestreaming app for DJs can’t help but spark questions about royalties for the musicians whose work those DJs are using in their sets. Skrachy is a US startup which claims to have an answer for that: it will charge DJs membership fees, and pay royalties out from that. “A Skrachy membership equips DJs […]

A new site called Good Splits is promising to help musicians “quickly and easily calculate royalties from aggregator services”. The idea being that they can not just see how much they’re earning, but also split the revenues between their collaborators with the minimum of spreadsheet-wrangling. “This app hides complicated accounting math inside a simple UI that lets […]

The Techstars Music accelerator has announced its plans for 2021, including the addition of Amazon Music as a new ‘member’ partner. The program will also run entirely virtually for the first time when it kicks off on 16 February 2021, including its selection process, which is underway now. Its managing director Bob Moczydlowsky is also […]

SoundStorming could be a lot of things, and at a glance the platform appears to begin a trek up that unassailable summit of music-tech: A Social Network For Music. But co-founders Alícia Rius and Arnau Bosch are keen to explain that their aim is simple. “We want to get the fans on board earlier than […]

We’re fascinated by the potential of ‘synthetic reality’, an area that brings together virtual reality, AI, ‘deepfakes’ and other technologies. Two more startups in the news this week offer some more sparks for thought on this score. Hour One is the first: a company that takes real people and turns them into virtual characters, with uses […]

Muse’s live shows are famously spectacular when it comes to the staging, so it’s no surprise that the band’s new concert film is out of the ordinary too. Drawn from their ‘Simulation Theory’ tour in 2019, it will be released to IMAX cinemas on 17 August in full wraparound vision – yes, there’ll be lots of social distancing […]

We’ve written about a blizzard of new livestreaming startups in recent months, but Aloha – which is the work of Swedish ‘audio operating system’ firm Elk – is a bit different. It’s described as “a virtual shared studio, rehearsal room, stage and or classroom with options to stream performances to audiences over social platforms” – so it’s a production […]

Music Ally is excited to announce more speakers and networking details for our forthcoming Sandbox Summit Global event.    New Speakers mxmtoon, Artist (US) The Future of Playlists Lizzy Szabo, Editor, North America, Spotify (US) Genreless Playlists, The Future of Playlists Tracy Patrick Chan, Head of Music Product & Engineering, Twitch (US) Focus on Twitch […]

A startup called SoundGym has launched a service called ToneGym, which it describes as “a new ear-training web application that uses deep gamification and deliberate practice methods to help musicians train, learn, improve skills, and unleash their full potential”. Or, if you want the soundbite: “A gym for the ears”. The web-based service will offer daily […]

It seems to be the season for TikTok alternatives to be staking their claims for young video creators. The latest example is a new app called Clash Video, which soft-launched last week for iPhones in the US. “We’re building the first Creator-Founded social network, empowering short form video creators through innovative monetization options, inclusive communities, and […]

The founders of music management company ATC Management have launched a new firm called Driift, to produce and promote ticketed online concerts. The team has already worked on recent livestreams for Laura Marling (who sold 6,500 tickets for her recent Union Chapel concerts), Lianna La Havas and Dermot Kennedy (who Driift says sold more than […]

UK firm Shodement has been building its ‘talent network’ since 2012, working on music projects and developing artists – the latter including investment, signing brand deals, booking live shows, managing releases and building fanbases. It also has a creative agency division working with big brands of all stripes, and runs events and festivals. Now it’s also in the […]

Audiobridge is one of the startups trying to do clever things in the cloud with the music recording process. Its iOS app enables musicians to work remotely on multi-track projects, recording and uploading tracks from their smartphones to sync them across the devices of their collaborators. The company is also raising money through an equity crowdfunding campaign, hoping to […]

And still the new livestreaming startups keep coming: we have two more to tell you about today. Gramrphone was one of the six winners in the #NextStageChallenge hackathon earlier this year – Music Ally was a partner in that event. Its service helps artists to stream live from their digital audio workstation (DAW) via Gramrphone’s software, creating their […]

Liteboxer is the latest fitness startup that’s making music a key part of its service. It launched yesterday, with both TechCrunch and Engadget running with the ‘Peloton of boxing’ shorthand to describe the company’s offering. That means a combination of hardware and software: a free-standing machine with lights to guide your punches, which connects to a smartphone or tablet app […]

To adapt the old cliché about buses: you wait ages for a music livestream startup to arrive, then two come at once! Except actually, the two are arriving just after what feels like another couple of dozen. Can FanTracks and Bulldog DM stand out from the crowd? FanTracks is launching with a prominent artist at […]

If Music Ally’s news has packed a little more… punch recently, it might be because our editor’s lockdown-fitness activity is jabbing, hooking and upper-cutting thin air in virtual reality game BoxVR. Now the game’s developer, British startup FitXR, has raised $7.5m of Series A funding – specifically $6.3m from VC firms and a $1.2m innovation loan […]

Veeps! Another new livestreaming startup for artists? Actually, no, this one’s been around since 2017, and was founded by Benji and Joel Madden from rock band Good Charlotte. It’s a platform for ticketed livestreams, and the latest artist to sign up is a biggie: former One Direction star Liam Payne. He’s going to be launching […]

We wrote about startup Yoop in May, as the latest entrant to 2020’s livestreaming-platform scramble. Its concept was an ‘eSpace’ virtual venue, which artists would be able to play ticketed live performances in. Now Yoop is expanding its activities: it’s creating eSpace venues in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville and the UK, to complement its […]

We’ve written about Delic before: it’s a service for musicians and rightsholders to manage, share and collaborate on music, which launched in beta last year, then raised £250k of funding early this year to prepare for launch. That launch happened yesterday. Musicians can sign up; collaborate with one another and manage those projects, including sharing the files; and also use […]

Kirt Debique met his SyncFloor co-founder Cestjon McFarland during a 20-year stint at Microsoft. Immersed in the Seattle music scene, he left the tech giant to start a label (Brick Lane records, named after his favourite part of London) when the music industry was struggling. “I spotted the bottom of the trough of the last […]

Concerts are returning in some countries as Covid-19 lockdown measures ease, but with a variety of social distancing measures. Grid is a new app that’s positioning itself as helping: not just music concerts, but other kinds of hospitality and events businesses too. The app can be used for mobile ticketing and checking in to events; to […]

We’ve written regularly about music/tech accelerators and incubators like Techstars Music, Abbey Road Red and Marathon Artists Labs. Another one that’s well regarded is Music WorX in Hamburg, run by the publicly-funded Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft body. It’s kicking off a new cohort for 2020, with a three-month program for “teams who have not yet or […]

Legendary producer Quincy Jones is opening up his Qwest TV educational platform to school pupils and music-college / university students around the world. They’ll have free access to more than 1,000 concerts, documentaries and pieces of archive footage covering the full gamut of genres. P eople wanting access can pre-register now, with the content to be accessible […]

Back in January, we wrote about Show4Me, which described itself as a “music interaction network”. It had raised $13.5m in funding and was offering acts a variety of tools such as music and concert crowdfunding campaigns, sales of music, D2F interaction and even a $1-per-year fan membership model. The company launched an online ticketing option in […]

It’s been a difficult couple of years for many virtual reality startups, with VR headset sales slower than expected, and in some cases funding drying up as investors lost their appetite for immersive content. There have been success stories though: musical VR game Beat Saber has sold more than 2m copies, with Facebook acquiring its developer last […]

Music Ally wrote about Swedish startup Corite when it launched last year as the latest way for artists to make money by selling off stakes in their songs to fans. In its first month of operation, it raised $24k in fan-funding for its first crop of artists. Now the company has been raising some funding of its own: a […]

Solfeg·io, Super Hi-Fi, Audoo and Uptune have been named as the winners of this year’s Midemlab startups contest, held as part of the Midem music industry conference. Like the conference, Midemlab was an entirely-online affair, with the pitches of all 20 finalists broadcast this afternoon, followed by the announcement of the winners. Music Ally is […]

British mobile-ticketing firm Dice is one of the startups most affected by the Covid-19 impact, but the company has been pivoting during the pandemic to focus on livestreams. Now its CEO Phil Hutcheon has published an article about 20 things Dice has learned about music livestreaming, which we think has some practical, helpful advice for artists […]

The latest startup hoping to make a livestreaming splash is called Clubify, and its pitch to fans is “your favourite DJs, clubs and festivals live at home”. The UK-based startup’s focus is on electronic music, then, but also on charging for access rather than free streams. Its subscription membership will cost £14.90 a month or £149.90 […]

Peter Chou used to be the CEO of technology firm HTC. Now he’s launched a startup called XRSpace, and unveiled its first virtual reality headset, the XRSpace Mova. It’s lighter than many rivals, and is a ‘standalone’ headset like the Oculus Quest – which means it doesn’t need to be connected to a PC to run its […]

Aimed at electronic music fans, a new app called AiMi is using AI technology to turn existing tracks from artists into adaptive experiences for listeners. The idea: listeners set the ‘energy’ rate they want, based on a scale of 1 to 10, and the app delivers a flow of continuous music to suit their requirements. AiMi uses […]

There’s been a radical shift in the way we make, deliver and experience music over the last decade, driven by innovation and partnerships between the music and technology industries. Innovation isn’t just about the biggest tech companies though: the music industry has its arms open wide to talented music-tech startups of all kinds. That’s why […]

In the Music & Tech Springboard series of videos we’ve produced with the BPI, we’ve heard from collecting societies, lawyers, advisors, accelerators and incubators, and labels about their advice for music/tech startups. But what about hearing from some startups themselves? That’s what this video does. A group of British startups who’ve all signed licensing deals […]

Technology and music may be two separate industries, but there are a number of people whose jobs revolve around bridging the gap between the two: helping startups to understand the strategies and priorities of rights holders, and helping rightsholders to grasp the needs of startups. It’s not uncommon to find these advisors working with one […]

If a music-tech startup’s product or service involves making the actual music available, that company will need licences for the music. Understanding how licensing works is one of the first and most important things that these startups need to understand. At its simplest level, that also means understanding whether you need to be talking to […]

Like any industry, music has its own set of trade publications and websites that are pored over by executives and staff in the labels, publishers and collecting societies. Meanwhile, there’s also a thriving technology industry media covering startups of all kinds, music/tech included. Getting featured by key media, from news stories and founder profiles to […]

We first wrote about startup SendMusic in late 2018, when it emerged as a way to help musicians, producers and music industry colleagues to send big files to one another, including for promotional purposes. Now there’s an update: SendMusic has launched its official iOS app. “You can now send, receive, listen and reply all in one place… […]

Squeezing new uses from existing technology sparks creative revolutions. Dancing to recorded music was weird until someone who understood the crowd started to link the right songs together in the right place, and created the nightclub. (It’s probably best not to dwell on one of the main claimants of that innovation, mind…) Fast forward to […]

We reported on the launch of Trash last June: an AI-powered video editing app launched by Hannah Donovan, formerly of Vine and This Is My Jam. Then, in January this year, her pitch won the startup showcase section of the NY:LON Connect conference in New York, with Donovan explaining that Trash had been licensing music for use in […]

Last October we reported on a startup called Reveel that was promising to help musicians to ensure they were credited correctly on all the songs they work on, through a ‘creator ID’ linked to each song or recording. Now Reveel has launched its actual platform (as opposed to just registrations for creator IDs) in beta. “Reveel is a collaborative […]

There will be no physical Midem conference this year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the event will live on digitally – including its annual Midemlab startups contest. Yesterday, the 20 finalists for this year’s competition (disclosure: Music Ally is one of the selecting partners) were announced, narrowed down from 226 entrants this year. The Music […]

The demo days of music/tech accelerator Techstars Music are usually a big draw in the physical world, with music industry execs and tech investors convening in Los Angeles to watch its startups pitch. By necessity, its 2020 demo day was different: streamed online with pre-recorded pitches. It was an impressive and varied selection of companies […]

In November 2019, WMG’s head of innovation, recorded music, Scott Cohen told Music Ally that he was interested in the ways that blockchain technology could create new value for the industry. One example: digitally-scarce collectibles that fans would buy and show off. Fast-forward six months, and one of the startups in the latest cohort for […]

We reported on the #NextStageChallenge last month: it’s an initiative that’s trying to round up developers for a hackathon and accelerator to tackle some of the challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic has created for musicians. Music Ally is one of the companies collaborating on the challenge. We’ve now got an update on participation: 425 applicants from […]

Streaming service Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren stepped down as CEO and from its board of directors in June 2017. Since then, he’s been a venture partner at VC firm Khosla Ventures; joined the board of AI music startup Popgun; and founded a new company called Next Music. What’s that? Well, it’s the firm behind a new […]

Music Ally readers may be familiar with Patrick Sullivan, who co-founded video copyright protection company Source3 and sold it to Facebook in 2017. (That team had previously set up RightsFlow and sold it to YouTube in 2011.) Sullivan’s new venture is Bonsai which is designed to give individuals seeking career advice access to one-to-one video meetings online with […]

We last covered Gotickety when it launched in September 2018, calling itself the “Candy Crush for the Music Industry” where users of the app play games in order to win meet and greets with musicians, personal video messages from stars as well as tickets/merchandise. The company has now revealed the results of a recent partnership with […]

There’s more news from the MusiCares Covid-19 Relief Fund in the US, which has now secured contributions from collecting societies ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. The fund is now past the $10m mark on the back of support from all quarters of the music industry. Meanwhile, in the UK another collecting society, PPL, is donating £700k to […]

As the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic drapes the world in uneasiness, many of our established economic systems are blinking under the cold light of community-centric scrutiny – including the music industry. The impact on streaming is still being debated, but the abrupt shutdown of the live music industry – and the disappearance of the income associated with it […]

A group of European music companies and organisations are launching a two-week hackathon called #NextStageChallenge, which aims to find inventive solutions to some of the challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic has created for musicians and the music industry. There’s a open call for submissions until 24 April, with the hackathon kicking off on 27 April […]

We’ve covered a number of startups in the ‘audio tech’ sector in recent times: among them Accusonus (which raised $3.3m in November 2019); Sonarworks (which showed off a personalised audio app called SoundID in January); and Tunefork (whose app for people with hearing loss impressed at Midemlab 2019). Now there’s another one for the list: Swedish startup Dirac, which describes […]

Our main Music Ally report is getting bigger and going quarterly! This is the first edition of the new report including some of the new elements we’ve been planning, with more to be added in the Q2 report in early July. We couldn’t ignore the coronavirus pandemic, of course, so there’s a feature exploring some […]

The latest startup using artificial intelligence technology to make sense of large music catalogues is AIMS API, from the Czech Republic. The company describes itself as “an API service that searches and recommends music within your catalogue based on reference audio tracks”. The startup’s background is in the production music world: co-founder Martin Nedvěd ran production […]

After past acquisitions of music analytics startups Next Big Sound (by Pandora), Semetric and Asaii (both by Apple) the industry once again has a clutch of independent dashboards competing to help artists, managers and labels make sense of their streaming and social stats. We’ve written regularly about the likes of Soundcharts and Chartmetric, but the […]

There are plenty of ways for artists to perform concerts at home and livestream them during the current period of social distancing and self-isolation, but not quite so many ways to charge fans to watch. One recently-launched option is a startup called Side Door. Its core business is (or rather: will be, once the lockdown […]

The New York Times has published an interesting (if also bleak) article exploring the challenges that the coronavirus pandemic is presenting for tech startups in particular. It’s a good read, especially for people within the music industry who work with music-tech startups. One Silicon Valley exec who specialises in restructuring failed startups describes the current period as […]

Yesterday, we reported on the launch of music-making app Endlesss. One of the British startup’s investors is music management company ie:music, through a new arm called ie:ventures. Director Stephen O’Reilly told us more about the new division, and why the company – whose artists include Robbie Williams, Passenger and Ladyhawke – is getting into startup […]

We wrote about music-making app startup (and extra-sibilant scourge of auto-correct systems) Endlesss several times in 2019: for example when the company pitched at and co-won the Midemlab startups contest last June, then when we interviewed CEO Tim Exile the following month. The company’s app has been available on an invitation-only basis since then, but today sees its official commercial launch […]

It’s not just music streaming services who are excited about podcasts and long-form audio more generally. The New York Times just acquired a startup called Audm, which runs a “subscription-based audio app that offers listeners the world’s best longform journalism, read aloud word-for-word by celebrated audiobook narrators”. It launched in 2016, and aggregates articles from the NYT but […]

For the last few years, LA-based startup Pex has been quietly scanning, fingerprinting and indexing every single piece of audio and video uploaded to open, public-facing platforms. It has accrued a whopping database of 20 billion data points, and – perhaps – know what’s happening on certain platforms better than the platform itself. Music Ally […]

We’ve written about British startup Landmrk regularly over the past couple of years: its platform enables artists (and other kinds of brands too) to create virtual ‘treasure hunts’ that encourage fans to explore the real world to find digital content. Obviously, there are some issues with the ‘explore the real world’ aspect right now, what […]

We wrote about startup Jamiphy in August 2019 after we spotted its profile pop up on an investment website. It was billing itself as ‘TikTok for Musicians’ – an app where artists could “create short musical videos with others, and with AI musicians using any instrument or style”. The company has since launched its app in Indonesia, and now […]

Dating app Tinder’s swiping interface has long been applied to other kinds of apps and services, music included – we wrote about Next in 2014 and Fab·fm in 2016 as two examples. The latest startup to apply the functionality of Tinder to music is Brots. It’s an app where listeners play 30-second clips of new acts where they can swipe […]

US-based BandPay is one of the startups trying to help musicians get paid for their work more efficiently. In its case, that takes the form of an app on which collaborators set milestones for their projects, with funds in escrow that are released when those milestones are hit. Now the company is getting a payment milestone of […]

Music Ally is long enough in the tooth to be skeptical whenever someone has a bright idea for launching a database offering “a clear and complete picture of who owns the rights to a song all in one place”. Those are the words of Atlanta-based startup Music Tech Works about its first product, Rightsholder·io, which is currently available […]

Israeli startup MyPart aims to use AI to turn the long tail of music catalogues into revenue streams that humans may have overlooked. In fact, the company wants to do more than analyse music and pull the needle from the haystack: it wants to pair the songs no human would consider with artists who never […]

“I was having panic attacks. I was completely anxious and stuck, because I wasn’t doing the thing I wanted to do. I struggled to write songs: I judged every idea as boring and not good enough, and that stopped me writing altogether. Four songs a year was all I could manage at one point…” Australian […]

German startup Loudly is taking the wrappers off its music-focused artificial intelligence technology, which it says can automatically remix tracks into different genres. The tech is being shown off on the company’s website with tracks by Becky G, Dillon Francis, Bien Monk and MØ. For example, Becky G’s track ‘Next To You’ has been remixed by the […]

In June last year we wrote about a new startup called Cameo, which had raised a $50m funding round to continue building its business selling personalised video messages from celebrities. Now it has a new rival called Taki, which is doing the same thing. “Make a birthday extra special. Have a celeb announce a baby to […]

Indian startup Flutin has a bold, dual-pronged mission: to round up millions of music fans and serve them – for free – new music that they’ll love; and to provide artists with an easy-to-reach fanbase that’s eager to engage and even purchase. Dig a little deeper into the company, and there are some interesting lessons on how […]

Boomy is the startup that’s helping anyone (non-musicians included) to create AI-generated music, and then release it on streaming services. According to the company’s latest update, its users have created more than 370,000 original songs in the last year, with 70% of those people never having made a song before. The update also explains Boomy’s latest features, […]

The latest startup to mix music and tourism is London-based Beatstravellers. “A social marketplace creating unique vacation options in the travel and music market,” is how the company describes itself on investor database AngelList. It wants to add a tourism strand when people travel to a festival, to help music fans see a bit more of the surrounding […]

Back in November 2016, Spotify launched its first ‘bundle’ subscription with another digital service: meditation and mindfulness firm Headspace. The bundle still exists, although according to Headspace it’s only available in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands and the UK. Since that bundle was announced, Headspace has continued to grow: its latest press release notes that its app has been […]

We first wrote about Thematic in June 2018: it’s a startup founded by YouTuber (and all-round influencer) Michelle Phan, which specialised in licensing music for her fellow online stars’ videos. The pitch was “no membership fees, no licensing fees, no rev-shares” during its public beta, with all the music pre-cleared for use. According to a crowdfunding pitch from the […]

Music is different to other creative acts: there’s a palpable barrier to entry compared to, say, photography. Jambl aims to change that by making music-creation fun, simple and entertaining, but with a full industry vertical behind it. Can hits be made, remixed, identified, and fully exploited, all in one platform? Jambl, which recently received half […]

It’s clearly the week for starry seed investors. Snafu Records has Abba’s Agnetha Fältskog but another new startup, Iris, can boast Queen drummer Roger Taylor as one of its early backers. Its promise: “a revolutionary new audio technology that heightens audio quality whilst simultaneously activating the brain”, which (if all goes well) will be integrated by […]

British music/tech startup Audoo has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign, in which it will attempt to raise $250k of funding at a valuation of £6m. CEO Ryan Edwards launched the campaign last night at the latest demo day of the Abbey Road Red incubator in London, which Audoo is currently part of. The company is focused on helping […]

Abbey Road Red, the music/tech incubator run by Abbey Road Studios in London, held its latest demo event last night, including an update on its portfolio. “We have now incubated 15 companies across all areas of the value chain, who together have raised $40m and are collectively worth $200m,” said Abbey Road boss Isabel Garvey, […]

In February 2019, Music Ally reported on a new investment fund being created by former BMG exec Zach Katz, working with manager Scooter Braun, cryptocurrency firm Ripple, and Something Gold boss Shara Senderoff. Raised In Space Enterprises would be looking to invest between $500k and $5m apiece in music/tech startups. In November last year, the fund led a […]

The latest startup hoping to use digital wizardry to help people learn to play instruments is Canadian firm Musiculus. The company has launched its first web apps (with native versions to come) as part of what it calls “the only all-in-one online music learning tool that will teach you a systematic approach to understand, learn, and […]

Will the next TikTok – i.e. a social app craze – be about making music? Norwegian / British startup Voisey hopes so. Its app aims to combine early SoundCloud’s zealous userbase, early Hype Machine’s excitement of discovery; Snapchat’s intimacy; and TikTok’s front-facing camera appeal. Its songs are created in two ways: producers can upload short […]

If co-founder Olly Barnes’ infectious optimism is correct, Voisey is a phenomenon-in-waiting. It’s an app that has the potential to shake up how songs are made; tap into hitherto locked-away artistic talent; develop a new breed of pop star and pop songs; and maybe even bypass the traditional label system. Sounds too good to be […]

In September 2019, startup studio Betaworks announced plans for an initiative called Audiocamp, promising to “invest in and mentor start-ups building on top of the latest advancements in NLP, or inventing new mobile, voice-enabled experiences and utilities, or engaging audiences in new ways of finding and supporting their next favorite audio programming, or developing new social listening […]

Last year we wrote about UK-based startup Delic, and its plans to launch a “progressive asset and rights management platform for labels, management companies, and independent musicians” including blockchain technology. At the time, it was still working on that product. Now the company has raised £250k (around $325k) in a ‘pre-seed’ funding round led by Velocity EIS Technology […]

One of the traditional highlights of the NY:LON Connect conference is the startup pitches session, and 2020’s event was no exception. New York startup Trash emerged as the winner in an audience vote for the best pitch, but fellow pitchers Super Hi-Fi, MyPart, Boomy and FeedForward won plenty of plaudits from attendees too. Music Ally […]

“VR is shit! It’s shit but it doesn’t have to be. Certainly the hardware’s not all the way there yet, it’s quite bulky and if you put it on for an hour or so you’re going to get a pretty raging headache and neck ache. But the real problem is the content is shit. The […]

Earlier this month, we reported on changes to the Midemlab startups contest at Midem in June: a new ‘Live Music Experiences’ category to replace the existing ‘Experiential Technologies’ one. Music Ally, as before, is one of the selection partners for the contest, which means we’ll be one of three companies (alongside Plus 8 Equity and The Lynk) […]

US startup Lüm launched a music discovery app in July 2019: the latest attempt at a smartphone app to help music fans find new artists to listen to. The company has since closed a $1.4m seed funding round, and says that it has “grown to over 15,000 fans, 22,000 artists and has over 60,000 tracks […]

We last wrote about French startup Joué in June 2019, when the company was one of the finalists in the Midemlab startups contest. It’s a hardware company that makes instruments, with its first (also called Joué) being a board-shaped device made out of wood and metal, with “magic modules” made of silicon slotting in to turn it into a […]

Audio-tech firm Sonarworks is hoping to make a splash at CES this week with a new product called SoundID. It’s an app for Android and iOS that promises “personalised audio perfected for each listener”, with its beta version available now. It’ll work by running users through a one-time ‘hearing test’ including their age, musical preferences and […]

Job title: Junior Programme Manager Responsible to: Innovation Manager Department: Abbey Road Red Location of work: Abbey Road Studios   Music is Universal   Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, […]

Will the number 13 be lucky for some music/tech startups? The annual Midemlab competition will be in its 13th year in 2020, and has just opened its call for entries. SoundCloud, Kickstarter, Songkick, The Echo Nest, Next Big Sound and Soundcharts are among the past participants in the contest, which is part of the Midem conference. […]

AI-music analysis startup Musiio has had a good 2019: it recently raised $1M in seed funding, is already working with a slew of clients, and is looking to raise money again in 2020. Musiio’s technology is a mixture of the advanced (AI that can listen to music) and the pragmatic (efficiently labelling catalogue). Right now, […]

With the decline of high-street record stores, not to mention the rise of smartphones, are artist-signing events dying out? Scribbled signatures may pale compared to selfies, but a startup called Qjam is aiming to give signings a new, digital spin. It’s launched an Android and iOS app that fans can use to stream live video of an […]

Touting (scalping) is an ongoing problem for mega-acts, where demand far outstrips supply. The inverse, of course, is the case for smaller acts – where tours can lose them money and small venues are often sparsely attended. RoadNation is the latest platform aiming to help, by developing what it is terming a “direct to fan” touring […]

Gamer music fans want music that fits the exact gaming moment they’re experiencing, and they want to show off their fandom. Five Vectors’ tech scans and funnels music programmatically to those audiences, and helps fans pay for it in ways that make interaction meaningful and status-based, like being skins in Fortnite. The post Music Ally’s […]

Take two trends: swipe-voting and short-videos. Mash them up, and what do you get? US startup Famous Media hopes you get a recipe for success. It’s working on an app called Famous for which its high-concept pitch is “TikTok with Tinder-style voting”. Its profile on investment site AngelList explains more. “Famous merges the youthful appeal of Instagram and TikTok […]

Artists connecting with fans and rewarding superfans has been a trend in our industry for years. Doing that while respecting their digital privacy is… a somewhat-newer trend. Something that’s trying to walk this line is Portes, a new platform and app launched by startup OCL. The app is available on iOS, with Android to come. “Use […]

In September, Music Ally spoke to three of Warner Music Group’s senior innovation and business-development execs, about how they work with startups and innovative technologies. That month, we also interviewed some music/tech startups, who gave some blunt, honest feedback on the challenges they have faced working with major labels in general. It’s a conversation that’s […]

This report focuses on AI music – both in terms of artificial-intelligence systems that are creating original music, and AI-driven tools that human musicians are using for their own creative purposes. There’s lots to talk about. We’ve started by digging through the Music Ally archives to offer a timeline of modern AI music – starting with UK […]

Bobby Vee’s ‘Rubber Ball’ has been on our internal jukebox all morning so far – and now on yours, no need to thank us, it’s all part of the service – since spotting a new music/tech startup called ODD Studios. The London-based company is working on “products that allow everybody to experience the thrill and […]

There’s a new independent music distributor set to make waves in the Nordic region, and it includes some familiar faces for that part of the world. Secretly Noord is the result of a partnership between existing distributor Secretly Distribution and local group NoordRights. The new venture plans to offer distribution, marketing and technology tools to labels […]

On Saturday and Sunday (November 16-17), Capitol Music Group held its 2nd annual music and tech festival, Capitol Royale, at its Los Angeles headquarters. The theme for this year was ‘Music on the Move’, with workshops, hackathons, panels, and social events revolving around the ever-changing landscape of music and innovation. Kicking off on Friday was […]

Ever since co-founding distributor The Orchard in 1997, Scott Cohen has been known as one of the music-industry executives with an intense curiosity about new technologies and their potential applications for musicians and rightsholders – even when (or perhaps, especially when) they are disruptive to current business models and ways of thinking.

 The post WMG’s Scott […]

Independent music company Marathon Music Group is launching a third cohort of its Marathon Artists Labs startup accelerator. Due to kick off in the first quarter of 2020, its theme will be ‘music discovery’, following previous programs focused on ‘tools for artist managers’ and ‘music-related content monetisation’. Marathon says that it’s looking for six startups for the […]

17 teams of developers are getting well-earned rests today after taking part in the Abbey Road Red hackathon at London’s famous Abbey Road Studios over the weekend. The focus was ‘The Power of Immersion’ with augmented-reality technology to the fore, courtesy of strategic partner Facebook – with its Spark AR tools. Top prize in the […]

The latest startup hoping to apply the idea of loyalty schemes to music artists is Boston-based Venu. Its Android and iOS apps are billed as ‘coming soon’ on the company’s website, which sets out how it’ll work for artists and for fans. In the former case, artists will be able to post their news to […]

Greek startup Accusonus has raised a Series A funding round of $3.3m, which the five year-old company will use to continue developing its “human-friendly audio software”. That means tools that use machine-learning technology to process audio, within software used by musicians, podcasters and video creators alike. For example, its most-recent product is Rhythmiq, “an instantly playable virtual instrument” […]

We’ve written a lot about the big music-streaming services in India like Gaana and JioSaavn, but this week brought news of an interesting-sounding music-discovery startup there. It’s called Flutin, and its schtick is building algorithmic playlists for users based on their musical preferences, activities, location and other data. The company says its app has been downloaded […]

Pex isn’t a startup we’ve written much about for Music Ally thus far, but it’s one of the more interesting companies in the current music ecosystem – not just because of what it’s doing now, but for how its technology might be used in the future. The company’s business is “independent video and music analytics and […]

Fans of music/tech startups that sound a little… out-there will enjoy Synaesthetic’s ambitions. “While listening to music is great, we have evolved to look for things we hear and want visually-enhanced musical experiences, like concerts and music videos,” is how the Boston-based company’s website explains its plans. “We are developing a new musical medium, that is […]

Startup pitch contests at conferences around the world have become a useful window into new music/tech firms. The latest contest will take place at the Web Summit in Lisbon on 7 November. In a session dubbed the ‘Music Innovation Prize 2019’, five startups will be pitching to a jury of “industry heavyweights, influential investors, and big-name artists”. […]

Algorithmic A&R continues to be a touchy subject in some quarters of the music industry, where there is distrust (and/or existential fears) of the prospect of big data encroaching onto the traditional territory of humans’ ears and guts. That’s even more the case when the algorithms are tracking not the momentum of an artist in […]

If you ever want to feel sympathy for the challenges that music/tech journalists face, read our 2018 report that included an ‘A to Z of Blockchain Music Startups’ and see our valiant efforts to find different ways of writing ‘X is a blockchain ticketing startup promising to beat touting and enable tickets to be transferred legally’. There […]

In February, Music Ally spotted plans by former Spotify global head of artist and industry partnerships Mark Williamson to launch a new startup called Rostr. It was tagged as “AngelList for the music industry” – a reference to the popular website cataloguing startups for investors. This week, Rostr has launched in beta. “The industry is really exciting […]

Music Ally wrote about Australian startup Replica earlier this year, following its participation in the Techstars Music accelerator. The company is using AI to create ‘Replica voice actors on demand” – taking recordings of someone talking, and creating a ‘replica’ voice capable of reading any text fed to it. For musicians, the company pitched the tech as providing “the […]

A startup hoping to forge more links between the music and esports industries has raised a $1m seed funding round. The company is Five Vectors, and its business is focused around working with artists to create original music tracks, which can then be licensed to esports teams and organisations. The company was co-founded by former Universal Music Central […]

Music Ally reported on Swedish startup Corite in August. It was a new fan-funding platform founded by former UMG execs Mattias Tengblad and Emil Angervall, offering distribution to artists but also the option for fans to invest in their music, and take a share of royalties. Today, Corite is launching in ‘beta mode’ with five Swedish artists: Albin Johnsén, […]

As Music Ally has been covering the latest wave of AI-generated music startups, we’ve argued that one of the most interesting uses for this technology is social – a way to create background music for videos and other posts in apps like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. That’s one reason why the acquisition of AI-music startup Jukedeck by […]

Startup Auxuman’s claim to have released ‘the first-ever fully AI-generated music album’ isn’t quite right: Endel has released a string of them in 2019, while Boomy is enabling anyone to release albums created by its AI (I’ve tried that already). Even so, Auxuman’s project is interesting. The album is called ‘Auxuman Vol.1’ and it features 10 tracks by […]

Music Ally first wrote about blockchain-music startup Audius just over a year ago, when the company raised a $5.5m funding round (a traditional one, not an ICO) for a platform described as ‘SoundCloud on the blockchain’. The following month, it revealed that its advisers included Beatport CEO Robb McDaniels; former Avicii manager Ash Pournouri; Pandora head of artist product Shamal Ranasinghe; […]

Music Ally has seen a few music-streaming apps making promises like payouts “over 2x more than Spotify”, but there’s a twist in the case of SingleServ: the payouts are going to charities. Launched as an iPhone app, the company describes itself as a “cause-based streaming platform that allows musicians to directly fundraise for charities by using their […]

Betaworks isn’t an ‘accelerator’ as such: it styles itself as a ’startup studio’ – meaning that besides running accelerators, it also builds new things in-house, and invests in external startups. GIF search-engine Giphy and mobile game Dots are two of its hits so far. Now it’s focusing on audio with its latest startup ‘camp’ program, […]

We’ve written a few times about music/tech startup Musiio this year: the company uses artificial-intelligence (AI) technology to analyse catalogues of music, for purposes including search, metadata-tagging and playlisting. Now the company has announced its first commercial client: Audio Network, the production-music firm acquired by Entertainment One earlier this year (with eOne now in the process of […]

The idea of adaptive-music apps, where music adapts in real-time to what you’re doing, has been around for a long time – from the heyday of British startup RjDj to 2019’s LifeScore. Now there’s another startup exploring the potential: Moscow-based Fluent, which has launched its “immersive music” app for iPhone. Its pitch: “Spotify plays static files. AI generates bland, soulless […]

In Music Ally’s latest analysis report, we take a look at the three major labels’ strategies around music/tech startups and investment. The full report is for Music Ally subscribers only, but you can sign up for a free trial, which includes access to the latest report. An extract from it follows, focusing on Warner Music […]

The intersection of mobile gaming and music education is a category Music Ally has been tracking since 2011, when a Finnish startup called Ovelin started to get attention for a music-learning game called WildChords. It later rebranded as Yousician, and as of summer 2019 has generated more than 100m downloads of its apps. Now history might […]

Our focus is on music/tech startups, and their interaction with the music industry. Screenwriter William Goldman’s famous line about Hollywood – ”Nobody knows anything” – applies just as well to the task of spotting successful music/tech startups. But what Music Ally does know is that whenever we’ve been curious about startups in the present, it’s given us […]

Back in May 2018, Music Ally spotted a new startup called OptimiseLab, which was building “AI technology to analyse, improve, and compose music”. Initially, it was focusing on the first of those: a tool that “accurately predicts music popularity scores and provides customised advice on song improvement”. 15 months on, and OptimiseLab has just rebranded to Resonoo, […]

Startup Jamiphy’s website is currently deliberately enigmatic: simply showing a logo and a screenshot of a mobile app with a musician playing guitar, and a string of emojis that look like feedback from people watching a video livestream. The company’s profile on investment site AngelList fleshes that out a bit though: Jamiphy is based in San Francisco, and […]

It feels like a matter of months since we were writing about Nashville production-music startup Soundstripe raising a $4m funding round… mainly because it IS just a matter of months. That round in May 2019 is now being followed by another $2m of investment, from Craft Ventures. That’s a good score for Soundstripe: the VC firm is run […]

Startup Vampr has been around since 2016, as one of the startups hoping to create a ‘LinkedIn for musicians’ industry-focused social network. It has since raised $900k of funding from angel investors and industry executives, but in 2019 the company is turning to the crowd for more money. Vampr has launched an equity-crowdfunding campaign this week using […]

Music Ally has written a fair bit about artificial intelligence (AI) technology being used to generate music. What about teaching humans to play music? That’s the goal of a new San Francisco startup called Kena·ai. The company is developing what it describes as “an Artificial-Intelligence personal music teacher” capable of “giving real-time feedback on practice sessions, […]

Audoo is one of the startups trying to ensure musicians get paid the royalties due to them – in its case, by developing tech to monitor music usage with a device placed in gyms, cafes and other public venues that feeds information back to collecting societies on what tracks have been played. Now the company is […]

“We want to invest in a game where the playing of the game includes all the roles of the music business, and the output of the game is real music and real pop stars. I’ve been trying to make this investment for three years. I feel it’s inevitable…” If that startup exists, Bob Moczydlowsky, MD […]

Of all the startup demos I’ve been given over the last decade working for Music Ally, Super Hi-Fi’s is the first that involves listening to Seal’s 1990s hit ‘Crazy’ being mixed into classic jazz cut ‘Monk’s Dream’ by Thelonious Monk. Oh, and it’s an AI doing the mixing, not a human. Super Hi-Fi isn’t an […]

PledgeMusic may have collapsed, but there are other fan-funding startups emerging in its wake. The latest is from Sweden and is called Corite, and it’s one of the growing number of platforms that aim to get fans to invest in songs, and get a share of royalties back in return. “A record label ruled by fans,” […]

Once upon a time, there were some interesting startups whose business was based mainly on curated playlists. One of them, Tunigo, was bought by Spotify, and was an important driver for that company’s move into playlisting. Another of them, Songza, was bought by Google, and had an impact within that company’s music services too. But […]

One of the interesting industry questions in 2019 concerns the outlook for niche music-streaming services: for example those focused on specific categories like classical, jazz or metal, which are often seen as being under-served by the big global streaming services. Now add ambient/electronic music to the list. There’s a new service called 9128, which is the […]

Music Ally wrote about startup VRJam in April, when it was trying to raise $500k of seed funding for a technology offering live ‘XR’ streams of music performances in virtual AND augmented reality. Now the company has officially launched its equity-crowdfunding campaign. Now the target is £250k (around $304k) which the company plans to use “to […]

“Our goal was never to make music that was good! Maybe someday we will, and people will say it’s good. But our goal is to make music that’s meaningful. That’s a different kind of thing…” Alex Mitchell is the CEO of Boomy, one of the youngest startups exploring the idea of… well, I would say […]

“I wonder whether we’re experiencing the death of content. Or rather, the fall of content and the rise of relationships. The value of content as a leanback experience that’s measured in ‘attention’ diminishes, and what increases is the measure of response: replies, interaction, engagement…” Don’t worry: Tim Exile, the CEO of British music-making-app startup Endlesss, […]

Boomy is one of the startups exploring AI-generated music, and launched in beta earlier this year. Now it’s emerging from that beta period, with test users having already created more than 100k songs using its technology. The general public is now being invited to sign in at Boomy’s website and start creating songs. “Our data shows […]

Benji Rogers was co-founder of crowdfunding website PledgeMusic, although he left (to set up startup Dot Blockchain) before things went downhill with the company’s finances. After returning in an advisory capacity earlier this year to try to help PledgeMusic out of its hole, Rogers has now unveiled his own new venture – NewsHero – and […]

Music Ally first wrote about Mubert in February: it was one of the latest clutch of startups working on technology to create generative/adaptive music using AI. It already has a consumer app that people can use to generate a stream of AI music, which over time promises to get tuned to their preferences. Mubert is also exploring another line of business, […]

Mixhalo is one of the music/tech startups that was actually founded by professional musicians: violinist Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger and Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger. The startup claims to be “democratising audio at live events” by streaming top-notch audio to people’s smartphones. “Build onstage VIP seating or offer an audio upgrade in the nosebleeds,” as its pitch puts […]

500 Startups is one of the most famous startup accelerators, based in San Francisco and now into its 25th program. This time round, there are two music/tech startups in the mix: BeatDapp and Renaissance. BeatDapp is one of the new clutch of startups (see also: Midemlab-winner Legitary) trying to help labels keep better track of their streaming […]

Australian AI-music startup Popgun has made a habit of showing its progress by publishing YouTube videos showing how its AI has learned to compose and play music. And now to sing it too. “For the past year we have been teaching an AI to sing. Using text and midi as input, we generate vocal tracks […]

Behind the music industry’s fiercely competitive public face hides a wider spirit of digital collaboration, according to Tuhin Roy, the executive who leads Universal Music’s efforts to support early-stage digital music companies. Roy was speaking at the Sónar+D conference in Barcelona alongside Warner Music’s Tiago Teixeira Correia, on a panel that gave a rare glimpse into the […]

The well-documented troubles of crowdfunding platform PledgeMusic have left a number of artists out of pocket and waiting to find out if the company will be rescued by a buyer. One of those affected was British band Jesus Jones, who’d been using the platform for pre-orders for their latest album ‘Voyages’. Now one of the […]

German music/tech startup Groovecat has launched a new product called Cyanite, whose pitch is “making emotions within songs visible with artificial intelligence”. It’s a tool based partly on data from the company’s existing Music Moments app, with CEO Markus Schwarzer explaining that the aim is to “offer the music and advertising industry the possibility to find […]

We’ve written about meditation startup Calm several times this year: for example when it raised an $88m funding round in February (an announcement that made us wonder whether Spotify would be doing more with meditation), and when it was the exclusive distribution partner for a new album by artist Moby the following month. Now there’s some more news – […]

We know Australian startup Popgun best for its demos showing how the company’s AI learned to compose and play music (watch the video here if you need a catchup). However, it’s also been working on something else: a new service called Gloss, which is firmly in Landr’s territory of AI-powered music mastering. “Gloss uses AI to make […]

The co-founder of Norwegian music firm Arctic Rights Management has announced plans for a new project called Capital in Music. Erik Brataas will be taking a six-month leave from his position at Arctic Rights to lead the initiative. “Capital in Music is a project founded by five different companies in the space of music, finance […]

Startup Cameo has an app that lets people pay between $5 and $3k to get personalised video messages from celebrities, including Snoop Dogg – also an investor in the company. Now Cameo has raised a $50m funding round to continue building a business that it claims is currently generating around 300k transactions a month, with the company […]

The Guardian’s piece on the launch of a new app called Trash mentions that it’s from the ‘ex-head of Vine’, but Music Ally also remembers Hannah Donovan as the co-founder of music-discovery site This Is My Jam back in the day. Her new venture isn’t specifically about music, but it could certainly be useful for musicians. Trash […]

Earlier this year, Australian startup Replica was announced as one of the latest cohort for accelerator Techstars Music: a company using AI “to create the next generation of games, films, music, and other media” providing “millions of ‘Replica’ voice actors on demand”. Now the company has been explaining more about what it does, and how it might be […]

Earlier this year, AI-music startup Endel revealed plans to release AI-generated albums through a distribution deal with Warner Music Group. And it definitely *is* a distribution deal: headlines about Endel becoming the first AI to ‘sign to a label’ were wide of the mark. Five albums came out earlier this year: ‘Clear Night’, ‘Rainy Night’, ‘Cloudy Afternoon’, […]

Voisey is a music-making app that gets people to sing or rap over pre-produced beats, then create one-minute videos (including split-screen duets) to share with friends. Think Smule’s Sing! Karaoke meets TikTok. Voisey soft-launched in Norway in December 2018, then in the UK in January 2019, with plans to debut in the US this summer. The […]

British music-streaming / hardware startup Electric Jukebox was announced in October 2015, and launched in November 2016 in its home country – although it postponed its planned debut in the US citing Spotify’s songwriter lawsuits as the reason. Then, in August 2017, the company revealed a new product called Roxi and suggested that it would go public in 2018. Fast forward […]

US venture-capital exec Mary Meeker has, for many years now, published an annual slide deck on ‘Internet Trends’. Despite their famous length – this year’s, which was published yesterday, is 333 slides long – the reports are pored over by startups and fellow VCs alike, as an annual state-of-tech roundup of trends and stats. There isn’t […]

Music and virtual reality? It’s a creatively-exciting crossover, but commercially it has yet to make a significant impact, with the clutch of music-VR startups’ prospects tied closely to the (slower than the hype predicted) growth of VR-headset ownership. Music game Beat Saber’s million-plus sales are a bright spot, but otherwise there’s a strong sense that […]

Music Ally first wrote about startup Super Hi-Fi in September 2018, when it announced a partnership with The Associated Press “to transform AP’s daily global news content into audio-based stories that can be seamlessly embedded into any digital music service partner”. The company’s focus is on “the space between the songs” on streaming services, with technology […]

The Midemlab startups contest is taking place at Midem today, and the fourth and final category was for experiential technologies startups. The jury for this category included Google’s Christian Behrendt; TheLynk’s Yvan Boudillet; Station F’s Marine Wetzel; Kuack Media Group’s Juan Francisco Saavedra Plata; and GP Bullhound’s Alon Kuperman. The post Midemlab 2019: experiential technologies startup […]

The Midemlab startups contest is taking place at Midem today, and the third category was for marketing and data/analytics startups. The jury for this category included Music Ally’s Paul Brindley; OneRagtime’s Stéphanie Hospital; Warner Music’s Tiago Correia; Q&A’s Suzy Ryoo; France Digitale’s Nicolas Brien; and Soundcharts’ David Weiszfeld. The post Midemlab 2019: music marketing and data/analytics […]

The second pitch session in this year’s Midemlab startups contest focused on music distribution and discovery startups. Disclosure: Music Ally was involved in choosing the finalists for this year’s contest. The jury for this session included Bluenove co-founder Martin Duval; Recochoku CTO Mikio Inari; Capitol Music Group VP of business development Ching-Ching Chen; Deezer’s Alexander […]

The Midemlab startups contest has become a key part of the annual Midem conference in Cannes. Today, this year’s finalists in four categories are pitching their technology and business models to panels of jurors, as well as the Midem audience. Music Ally is here – disclosure: we’re a partner for Midemlab, helping to choose the finalists […]

Back in November 2016, Music Ally got wind of a new startup called SuperRational in the UK, which was aiming to launch a blockchain-powered crowdfunding platform for music. We were a little early to the party, but SuperRational has been in touch to alert us to its new brand – Delic – and its plans to launch in beta […]

Have you heard the acronym ‘PAI’ yet? It’s one to remember, standing for Personal Artificial Intelligences: digital avatars based on real people, with AI technology powering their interactions with humans. Gizmodo has an interesting profile of a startup called Oben which is working on this technology. “This startup, with its 100 plus employees, is betting that in the future, […]

There are already a number of companies making it possible for fans and high-wealth individuals to invest in musicians, from the familiar crowdfunding platforms like Patreon to the likes of Royalty Exchange. The latest startup falling into the latter category is Amplify, which is planning to launch a private beta of its service this summer. “Amplify […]

Soundtrap is the cloud music-studio startup that Spotify acquired in November 2017. Since then, the tool has continued to develop, including partnerships with schools and collaborations between emerging artists. Now it’s also part of Spotify’s push into podcasts, with the launch of something called Soundtrap for Storytellers. Spotify is describing it as “a cloud-based one-stop shop […]

Nashville-based startup Soundstripe is a production library that licenses its catalogue to video producers of all levels, from YouTubers to advertising firms and filmmakers. The company says it has issued more than 2m of its ‘micro-licences’ since it was founded in 2016. Now it has raised $4m of Series A funding to continue growing the business, adding […]

The 20 startups that will be pitching as part of the Midemlab startups contest in Cannes this June have been revealed. The contest saw 177 startups apply, with the final 20 chosen by Music Ally and Bluenove. In the music creation and education category, the finalist are Big Ear Games, Endlesss, Jambl, Muzeek and Lonofi. For […]

Here’s a startup so new, its website isn’t quite up and running yet. However, Los Angeles-based Audzilla does sound interesting from its just-added profile on investment site AngelList. “Audzilla is a music technology that allows fans to create one of a kind fan generated videos at live events by streaming the high definition audio from the soundboard […]

There’s a new startup hoping to make an impact on the Japanese concert-ticketing market. Zaiko has just raised its first round of seed funding according to IQ, and is rolling out its white-label service, which will help promoters, venues and artists to sell tickets directly to fans. The funding came from investors including VC firm North Base Media […]

British startup Curve Royalty Systems has launched a new ‘enterprise-level royalty processing’ service, which is already being used by independent labels Hospital Records and Cooking Vinyl, among other clients. The company was co-founded by Richard Leach, former digital sales and strategy director at distributor ADA; Tom Allen, former digital distribution manager at Essential; and Ray Bush, who […]

Music Ally cooled on the idea of ‘music messaging’ startups some time ago: there were a bunch of them, and sustainable business models/consumer interest was thin on the ground. But the intersection of music and messaging in other ways – streaming services integrating with Facebook Messenger, for example – is very interesting. Can Project Wave change our […]

The US in particular has seen several ‘digital jukebox’ startups in the last decade: often focused around people requesting songs from a smartphone app to play in the bar/space where they’re hanging out. Requestify, from Norway, is interesting because it’s doing more than just that. So yes, it’s a “fully app-driven social jukebox designed to […]

If you’ve ever been to an ‘open-mic’ concert, you’ll know how they work: musicians turn up with their instruments, sign up to take part and then wait their turn to play a few songs. Now there’s a startup trying to do that in the online world. It’s called MicTurn. “Choose from a list of online venues, […]

Music Ally has seen a few startups try to make ‘co-listening’ a thing in our history, from Turntable and the original incarnation of Soundrop a few years ago to the radio-like Stationhead now. Next to try is a US startup called Jam Session, which is currently in beta. It’ll be an app that “lets you listen […]

Sometimes we spot a new music/tech startup on investment site AngelList with not much information on what it’s doing, but the people involved will make us prick our ears up. Renaissance is the latest example. The US startup has an interesting tagline – “What happened in 1300AD will happen again, soon” – and it’s listed in […]

British startup VRJam is seeking $500k of seed funding to continue developing its technology for live ‘XR’ streams of music and other entertainment performances in virtual and augmented reality. The company, which emerged from stealth mode at the London Music Conference last year, is offering 5% of equity in return for the desired seed funding, which it […]

From being Lady Gaga’s manager and an investor in startups to Spotify’s boss of creator services, Troy Carter has been a prominent figure in the music industry’s digital evolution in recent years. Now he’s returning with a new company called Q&A, co-founded with J. Erving and Suzy Ryoo (who previously worked with Carter at investment […]

We know Drake likes Fortnite: he’s one of the highest-profile musicians to play (and stream video of it) online, with gaming star Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins. And we know Drake likes investing in the games world: in October 2018 he chipped in to a funding round for esports startup 100 Thieves, along with artist-manager Scooter Braun. Now Drake […]

Artiphon is one of the startups exploring the potential to create new musical instruments with a digital twist. It raised $1.3m in a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2015 to make its first device, the Instrument 1.The $399 device is a MIDI controller designed to work like a guitar, piano and/or drum machine. A few years on, […]

The news that a series of albums generated by the technology of startup Endel are being released through Warner Music is spreading far and wide. There are some clarifications being made about how the relationship has been presented, though. It’s not a ‘record deal’, for example: it’s a distribution partnership. Journalist Cherie Hu has done some […]

There’s a little bit of confusion around the name of this new app: its profile on investment site AngelList refers to it as Tuner, while its website refers to it as Brassroots. We’ll surmise that a rebranding is underway, although from what to what we’re still unsure about – it’s also possible that Tuner is the company name and […]

We wrote about AI-music-creation startup Boomy in January, after spotting its profile on an investment website. The company then opened up its private beta-test earlier this month, enabling people to play with its system to “generate beautiful, creative songs in seconds with artificial intelligence”. Now founder Alex Mitchell has published a blog post explaining a bit more […]

There’s a long line of standalone apps that tried to help people discover music and artists, and/or offered social features around that. It’s hard to think of any that became sustainable businesses, but the better ideas *did* ultimately become part of music-streaming services’ core features. That’s why Music Ally is always keen to explore new […]

Yesterday, Music Ally was at the Quantum conference in London. It’s a one-day event within the London Book Fair with a focus partly on new technologies and trends. One of the companies speaking was a startup called Almost Tangible which, in the light of Spotify’s push into non-music content, we found interesting. The company is trying to […]

I Am Pop is one of the startups trying to help musicians and music brands make better use of messaging apps in their marketing. It’s already working with artists signed to labels including Sony Music, Warner Music, AWAL and PIAS, and now the company has a new €2m funding round to help grow its business. I […]

In January, we discovered a new startup trying to use artificial intelligence to create music: Boomy. It was touting technology to “generate beautiful, creative songs in seconds with artificial intelligence – for your fans, your friends, your business, or just for you” with the promise of a web-based private beta, and mobile apps to follow. Yesterday, Boomy opened […]

Music/tech startups are being invited to apply for this year’s Midemlab competition, which will see its final pitch sessions take place at the Midem conference in Cannes this June. Deezer and Japanese service Recochoku are the official partners for this year’s event, with jury members from companies including Google, Sony Music, The Orchard and Warner […]

Artificial intelligence is a hot ticket in the music industry and is spinning off in a variety of exciting new directions. It is being used to create music but also to power recommendations, to better understand the contexts of listening and to patch the leaks in the hull of metadata. It is, therefore, the Swiss […]

Music Ally first encountered French startup Antescofo in 2016, when the company was a finalist in the Midemlab startups competition. It was touting technology that would let amateur musicians playing at home be accompanied by a full orchestra. The company went on to launch its app, called Metronaut, to do exactly that. Now Antescofo has announced a $4.5m […]

A new US startup called Loop Media plans to launch a video-streaming service focusing on short-form content, including music videos. The company will also focus on film trailers, game trailers and TV clips, with plans to make all this content available in public spaces, as well as on people’s smartphones. “Loop plans to link in-home […]

Abbey Road Studios wants to recruit more teams with women founders to its Abbey Road Red startup accelerator, according to the studios’ MD Isabel Garvey. “We are acutely aware that we have no female founders, and very few women in our founder teams, and we are trying to be a little more diverse,” said Garvey, […]

“I think we’re looking at a new way of doing music, which is a collaboration between human expertise, human taste, and human raw talent in creating music and recording it, with the machine’s ability to combine those things and generate music all day long. And make it sound like a human made it.” “Just imagine […]

It’s the week for big podcasting news. Spotify has made waves with its acquisitions of Gimlet Media and Anchor, but other podcasting firms are also capitalising on current interest in the medium. US startup Himalaya Media, for example, has raised $100m in funding to push its podcast-listening app and distribution platform. The app launched in […]

Spotify said yesterday that podcasts are just the ‘start’ of its ambitions to focus on all forms of audio. What next? We’d suggest that meditation / mindfulness will be high on the company’s radar – and not just because one of its first subscription-bundle partnerships was with meditation app Headspace back in 2016. Investor interest […]

Metal-focused streaming-radio startup Gimme Radio is raising money, but through equity-crowdfunding rather than turning to VC firms. The company has launched a campaign on crowdfunding platform SeedInvest. It’s trying to raise $1.5m with a minimum amount of $500 per investor, and if it succeeds, Gimme Radio would be valued at $6m. The campaign also offers […]

Singapore-based music/tech startup Musiio has raised $1m in seed fundingfrom investors including Wavemaker Partners, Exponential Creativity Ventures and other angel investors. The startup uses artificial-intelligence technology to analyse catalogues of music for a range of clients. As its CEO Hazel Savage explained at the recent NY:LON Connect conference, the company can power automated search through […]

We know that in-car radio has historically been a key source of music discovery. And we also know that rideshare services (Uber and Lyft included) are very-popular ways to get around cities. Startup Steereo is bringing those two ideas together, with a music-promotion service based around paying drivers to play new music to their passengers. […]

Welcome to the first Music Ally Report of 2019. We’re taking a look at some of the key challenges that lie ahead for our industry this year – and how they might be tackled. From diversity to startups via fake music and taking a bite out of radio, we hope it’s a constructive take on […]

We wrote about startup HitRecord for the first time last October, when it launched a project with artist Logic. He was the highest-profile musician so far to take advantage of HitRecord’s platform for creative collaborations: posting the bones of a new track and inviting fans to flesh it out with their own contributions – with […]

We’ve been writing about text-marketing startup SuperPhone since 2016, when musician Ryan Leslie raised $1.5m to build a tool for artists to communicate with fans via SMS. Now it’s got some competition from a startup called Community, discovered by Wired when actor and investor Ashton Kutcher promoted it to his fans. “I miss having a […]

Five music/tech startups pitched their wares at the NY:LON Connect conference this afternoon in London: Amadeus Code, Musiio, Rootnote, Scored and ClicknClear. The audience voted on which was their favourite, and ClicknClear prevailed. An achievement more impressive because of the high quality of all the pitches, and the technology they showcased. Here’s our roundup of each […]

We first wrote about British startup ClicknClear last year (when it was known as Clickamix) with its plans to license music for use in performance sports like cheerleading, figure skating and gymnastics. The company has since started working with more than 100 music rightsholders, including Universal Music Publishing, Warner Music and BMG. Now ClicknClear has […]

Wavy is a music/tech startup that we have to admit slipped through our net: an iPhone app using augmented-reality technology to create ‘experiences’ around music tracks. The idea was that it would collaborate with musicians on AR videos, which fans could then use to create their own clips for sharing. Anyway, Wavy has now been […]

It’s very early days for San Francisco-based startup Wavecut: its website isn’t up and running yet, and its profile on investment site AngelList (which is how we found it) merely says that the company is “structuring the world’s audio”. Oh, and that its CEO is Dave Goldblatt, a former product operations specialist at Facebook and […]

One of the aspects of the music industry’s return to growth is the willingness of music companies (and, indeed, individual artists) to invest in music/tech startups. With that in mind, a feature in the New York Times interviewing venture-capital firms about the investment market makes for interesting reading. Its proposition is that the startup-funding market […]